Courtney W. Nash

Summit at Snoqualmie Sold to Owners of Crystal Mt.

The Seattle Times has a quickie little snippet about some ski resort ownership swapping, namely that Boyne USA has bought the Summit at Snoqualmie from Booth Creek. At first we were a little concerned, namely because Booth Creek has a great track record from a customer service perspective, especially when they extended our season's pass for free after the disastrous winter of 05-06. But after a little more research, we're very excited because this is excellent news for mountain bikers.

Wha? Yes, I'm talking ski resorts, but ski resorts aren't just for snow any more, as Whistler has rather famously demonstrated with its world-class mountain bike park. While resorts all over Canada have busily been turning their summer slow seasons into year-round income generators by using their lifts for bikes, the US has been concomitantly obsessed with litigation and personal injury, lagging pathetically behind in blazing any bike trails down the slopes. But Boyne owns Cypress resort just outside Vancouver, BC, which recently opened a small set of downhill lift-accessed mountain bike trails (though they may close down until after the Olympics), and Boyne Mountain in Michigan has downhill mountain biking as well. So we'll welcome Boyne USA with open arms; and these arms are willing to build them some mountain bike trails if they're interested.

Cross-posted at Seattlest.

That Didn't Go As Planned

Last post, I mentioned that I was doing a heli bike camp for the Dirt Series. The plan was to get dropped at 9,000 feet via helicopter and escort about 40 camp participants back down through fields of granite rock slabs and unending alpine meadows. We scouted the route two days in advance on a Friday, in gorgeous sunny weather. Having never been in a helicopter before, much less over untouched Canadian wilderness, I'll notch that as a top 5 life event.

The weekend arrived, along with all 40 of our bike clinic clients. Everyone was giddy at the thought of a heli-drop bike ride on Sunday, and the bike clinic was going off without a hitch. Until Sunday, when we ended up again at 9,000 feet, with the sun replaced by snow. Blowing snow, to be precise. And we had a freelance journalist writing for the London Sunday Times riding with us. You know, something like the second largest paper...in the world. We were supposed to show him a fantastic time, and once the flakes started falling we knew everyone was in for an adventure, but not the kind they had signed up for. I'll let the intrepid journalist retell the rest of the story, in the meantime I'll revel in the glory of going down in print as the mountain biking guide who led him astray. And yet I will continue to insist that you're only truly lost if you don't know where you are--I knew where we were, it just wasn't where we wanted to be.

Going Heli-biking

Within a matter of days, this will be me. No, it's not a bad James Bond scene, but rather we'll be getting dropped off in the remote mountains outside Blue River, British Columbia. For the second-to-last Dirt Series camp of the year, Sunday will include an option in the afternoon to get a helicopter ride from Mike Wiegele's Heli Skiing operation. We will then ride our bikes down some ridiculously rugged, scenic terrain packed with rock faces, steep descents, and an endless selection of lines to choose from. It will be the mountain biking equivalent of a Norwegian smorgasbord buffet. Somebody fetch me a bucket.

Dirtstravaganza

April slipped through my fingers all too quickly, and once May sprung up in its place, mountain biking season was poking its first, tentative shoots up out of the ground and demanding attention. I've coached three Dirt Series camps already, in Vancouver and Whistler, BC, and Bellingham, WA. Somewhere in there I managed to go paragliding and kayaking, uncover the hidden humor of economics, and probe the secrets of Walla Walla heat-seeking rocks. I also co-wrote an article on dirt jumping--it was my first piece for the Bicycle Paper, which is published here in Seattle. Next weekend I'm off to Hood River then Park City, two locations where I've never mountain biked (despite being from Salt Lake, I never rode up at the resort), and then back to North Van. It's a whirlwind, but each time I see more women doing what is pictured on the left, I simply get more excited for the next camp around the corner.

Jump Seattle - Parkour in Seattle Metropolitan Magazine

My article on Parkour is out in the most recent Seattle Metropolitan magazine, and I'm literally stunned by the photos. I went out to watch the shoot, and photographer Chase Jarvis was capturing two of the traceurs I'd interviewed back in February. You may have even seen his work before and not known it--he's a very accomplished commercial photographer and watching him work was a real treat.

They picked a couple great ones for the article, and here I've included another one of Panda that is a favorite of mine because it seems like he's inside a video game, and you can't tell where his landing is. Bottomless Parkour. More of Chase's photos are posted over at the Washington Parkour forum.

I love the graphic novel feel they have. I'm reminded of Sin City or even the most recent Batman movie. And the two traceurs (Panda and Morgan Houghton) look like absolute rock stars.                                                                                       

Oh the Irony™

Libby Copeland has a fabulous piece in the Washington Post about how corporations have taken over Spring Break, plastering every surface with ads and banners, pushing product samples and surveys on the hapless crowds of college partiers that descend each year on beach destinations. Instead of the typical reserved-voice-of-the-objective-journalist tone, she slowly and cleverly skewers the whole phenomenon through a series of quick scenes and amused observations on her part. I devoured  the whole thing, and re-read certain parts. With a few simple sweeps, she captures the perfect storm of vacuous corporate branding DoubleSpeak paired with mindless product-gorging college students easily lured by the shiny appeal of free stuff ultimately questioning how "free" any of that stuff really is.

On the right-hand side of the article, there's a video screen capture, promising a quick clip showing the brandification of Spring Break. After reading the article, I click on the video link ,which launches a new page on the site, and then I am told "Your video will begin after this message." And then I watch the American Airlines ad so I can see my little piece of web video content. (Next to the animated airline ad was another static one, making for a full-screen American Airlines branding blitzkrieg.) I waited another minute or two after the ad ended, and my video carrot still had not materialized. I wandered off to work on something I was writing, and came back about 10 minutes later. Still now video. Unlike Tiffanie Pence, one of Copeland's subjects who squealed with glee upon receiving a free Victoria's Secret swimsuit, I was like, so not excited.

On Choosing Characters

Michael Pollan has a really nice piece over at Nieman's Narrative Digest (part of Harvard's school of Journalism). He covers a few things I've been consciously working at in my own writing, including selective first person use, working from a naive perspective, and using humor and suspense better. He had one "pillar" of advice that I've enjoyed in others' writing that I've never given enough thought to (especially given my predilection for writing about outdoor activities): Get beyond the "humans-doing-stuff" definition of narrative. It is a crutch for me, I realize; there's inherent drama, suspense, and story arcs in outdoor sports. But there's other perspectives, too.

I recently wrote about a geologist and a winemaker in the Walla Walla region of Washington, who are both rather obsessed with rocks. The geology of the region is the real story there, notably how smaller areas that are hundreds of feet deep in rocks (and producing some of the most amazing wine in the area) ended up scattered near acre after acre of rolling wheat fields. The rocks are the story here, but I still ended up telling it from the perspective of the people. I wonder what I would have discovered if I'd really told those rocks' stories instead?

The Stranger Goes Snowboarding

I just recently wrote an article for the Stranger on gearing up for snowboarding if you're interested in learning.  Fellow Seattlest Seth (to whom I owe thanks for pairing me up with the Stranger folks) also has a nice piece on the history of snowboarding, which was birthed right here in the mighty Northwest.

Baker In Repose

Taking a break from supervising a day of mountain bike trail work.

Fresh Cedar

We've taken the disastrous weather that recently hit the Pacific Northwest, and turned the resulting blown-down trees into fodder for new mountain bike trails.

I love this photo of a couple of small downed trees we used for  a 75-foot long bridge that we're building over a particularly nasty boggy section of our new trail.

Building trail has been a surprisingly enjoyable experience--it satisfies both my need for outdoor exercise (albeit a very different kind than simply going for a ride) and my OCD tendencies. Cutting and grooming a perfect stretch of single track calms the random-access beast in my brain, and lets it process all the detritus floating around in there.

Afterwards, all I have are calm thoughts, a sore back, and the smell of cedar lingering on my hands and clothes.